Jessica Rigeway's beaming smile is on flyers taped to school yard fences, on minivan windshields at soccer practices and even glowing from electronic freeway billboards.

Parents seeing those ubiquitous images cannot stop their minds from unspooling scenarios from the creepiest of TV crime show dramas.

Young children, accustomed to seeing photos of doggies and kitties on flyers with the word "Missing" on them, ask questions no parent is ever ready to answer.

As a community on edge awaits news of the missing 10-year-old girl, parents are going about their lives in this unscripted drama, trying to find a way to talk to their children about what everyone is afraid has happened while searching for a way to walk the fine line between keeping kids safe and completely freaking them out.

"This has been a roller coaster week," said David DeMott, president of a parent organization at Witt Elementary, where Jessica Ridgeway is a student. "Obviously everybody is sensitive right now. There are not a lot of kids out playing in the neighborhood."

At the same time, DeMott said the community isn't hiding behind bolted doors.

"It's important to pay attention, to know where kids are, and everybody's had that extra talk with their kids about, 'this is why it's important that I know where you are."

Jefferson County schools has offered counseling to Witt students all week, and school staff have been outside most days, greeting arriving kids and, if they want, escorting them to class, said Lynn Setzer, district spokeswoman.

Jessica Ridgeway was last seen Oct. 5, as she walked to school. She never made it, which prompted more than 1,000 volunteers and law enforcement officers to search for her.

DeMott, who attended Witt Elementary as a child and moved back to the neighborhood so his four children could attend the little school too, is determined that the community will continue to come together and to strengthen as a result of the crisis Jessica's disappearance brought on.

"I think a big thing for us as a community that we've talked about is, 'make sure you are talking to kids. We're not willing to live in fear, not willing to give up our neighborhood to this but we need to realistic about what kind of a world this is."

In the area where a body was found Wednesday — a body officials have not officially linked to the missing child — parents have already been on heightened alert for several weeks, following reports of a stranger trying to lure children into his car by offering them candy.

Now, with Jessica's disappearance, several parents say the tension has racheted up.

DeMott said his oldest daughter was a classmate of Jessica's last school year. She is obviously worried about her friend, DeMott said. "I tell her to pray for her friend, but we set some realistic expectations that it could not turn out well," he said.

"It's been hard for her," DeMott said. " This is something you don't want to talk to a 10-year-old about."

Officials at the neighboring Boulder Valley Schools say they are working on a message to go out to parents in the event the worst is realized.

"We're expecting a lot more traffic around the schools," said Briggs Gamblin, Boulder schools spokesman. "(More parents) may want to drive that child to school, walk that child into the door. We need to allow that."

There is no shame in being worried, said Andrew Tucker, Boulder's counseling coordinator.

"It is certainly a normal reaction to have as a parent, especially something this close," he said. "We have to remember that (stranger abduction) is a relatively infrequent occurrence, thank goodness. While we need to be safe, we also need to let kids be kids."

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